District cooling expands in China

District cooling was only adopted recently in China, but is developing fast: many sites have been constructed in Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changzhou and Changshan.
- Guangzhou University hosts an example of a network cooling 10 universities and 2 shopping centres in the southern and northern parts of the city. The system has a cooling capacity of 520 000 kW. It has 4 central plants, one of which uses absorption and centrifugal chillers, the three others using ice storage capacities of up to 949 000 kW, making it the largest system of this type in the world.
- Beijing Zhongguancun Square network covers, an area of more than 500 000 m² in the central part of the Zhongguancun Science Park. It uses a centrifugal chiller and three dual evaporator screw chillers and ice storage technology, with an ice storage capacity of 100 445 kW and a cooling capacity of 42 204 kW.
Despite the potential financial, technical and environmental problems that my hinder this technology, district cooling has good perspectives in China, provided that it can be combined with other technologies such as ice storage, water-source heat pumps (including seawater and wastewater systems) and high temperature differential and low water flow rate technology.
JARN February 25, 2011